Antonio Gramsci
Antonio Gramsci (22 January 1891-27 April 1937) was General Secretary of the Italian Communist Party from 1924 to 1927, succeeding Amadeo Bordiga and preceding Camilla Ravera. He was also a leading Marxist philosopher, arguing that capitalists used "cultural hegemony" to maintain power (propagating values and norms so that they become "common sense" values of all). Biography Antonio Gramsci was born in Ales, Sardinia, Italy on 22 January 1891 to a father of Arbereshe descent and a Sardinian mother. He was educated locally until 1911, when he received a scholarship at the University of Turin, and he joined the Italian Socialist Party in 1913. In late 1915, he was writing for the socialist newspaper, Avanti!, and by the end of World War I he had already established some of the tenets of his political views. Influenced by Benedetto Croce, he rejected positivism, determinism, and reformism, and emphasized the importance of the cultural struggle instead. Following Italy's domestic political disorder after World War I, h hoped a socialist state would be established through the factory councils which paralyzed the economic and political life of Turin, but which were ultimately crushed by Giovanni Giolitti. Gramsci joined the Communist Party of Italy upon its foundation, but soon found himself in opposition to the rigid determinism of its general-secretary, Amadeo Bordiga. Supported by instructions from Moscow, in 1922 he began to improve Communist organization and to encourage anti-fascist collaboration among the left-wing parties, in opposition to Bordiga's intentions. By 1926, he was firmly in control of the party, though he failed in his efforts to hinder the establishment of a fascist authoritarian state. In the same year, all non-fascist parties were banned, while he was arrested on 8 November 1926. He died in prison in 1937. His fundamental importance to communist ideology derives from his Prison Notebooks (1928-37), in which he reflected on why the communist world revolution had failed to materialize. He argued that, contrary to traditional Marxist assumptions, in liberal democracies governments ruled mostly with general support. In other words, owing to historical, cultural, and religious factors which shaped people's perceptions, they were actually content with their own oppression. as a Marxist response, he advocated a sustained communist campaign against the whole breadth of bourgeois institutions, leading to the eventual overthrow of the state and the establishment of a new socialist culture. Despite his insistence on the need for the masses to be guided by the Communist Party, he nonetheless advocated much greater mass involvement in the Communist movement. The party's most important task was to combine Communist theory and practice, such as to seek the combination of intellectual assiduity and revolutionary zeal (the "pessimism of the intellect and optimism of the will). His ideas had a tremendous influence on the Communist parties which operated in relative independence from Moscow, such as in Italy, France, and various South American countries. Category:1891 births Category:1937 deaths Category:Italian politicians Category:Italians Category:Politicians Category:Atheists Category:Communist Party of Italy members Category:PSI members Category:Italian communists Category:Communists Category:Philosophers Category:Journalists Category:Authors